Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Happy New Year!

What a lot of change for our family! I start my new job tomorrow. We leave to visit our kids in 8 days. Hopefully some day soon Brent will be done with his parasitic-kidney-energy-sucking-nauseating-pain-inducing stone.

Brent's going to be able to go back into the office tomorrow. He's been working from home the last few days, but he's been feeling much better now that the infection is cleared up.

Some of my Young Women came over today and we hung out and "scrapbooked" calendars for them for the next year. We had a lot of fun chatting and snacking and messing around with paper and ribbon. :)

I've got the rest of the evening booked with washing all the clothes and blankets that have been donated for Haiti so we'll know they're good to go when we get there. We've really had so much help from so many people. Our agency will be sending a group down again in April so any "overflow" will go down with them in a few more weeks.

A childhood friend of mine is also adopting a girl and boy from Haiti right now. She's much farther along in the process than we are and she should be just weeks away from bringing her kids home. She gave me 12 new pairs of children's sandals to take to our kids. She's helping the foundation that supports her children's orphanage to build a school in their village, so they've been busy gathering desks and chairs and chalkboards, etc for that major endeavor. She said they already have 500 village children that want to attend the school when it's completed!

She also said the Haitian government has been contacting her orphanage lately, hoping they can take abandoned infants. So she's trying to gather up infant formula to take with her when she goes again to bring home her children. We just don't realize how lucky and "geographically blessed" we are.

I'm very intrigued to see what awaits us in Haiti. We're staying at the Haitian equivalent of a 5 star hotel, but our coordinator just let me know that we'll probably want to bring our own sheets! I know the hotel is gated and guarded. It's just a completely different world.

I've also been thinking about the logistics of bottled water. We not only need to use it for brushing teeth, etc, but for mixing Nathan's bottles and then washing them afterwards. Fortunately we can buy bottled water at the hotel, so we don't have to bring that down as well. 200 lbs of luggage doesn't go very far when you're trying to haul so many necessities for these children. (And I thought it was hard packing my bags for my 18-months as an LDS missionary!!) Every bit of space needs to be prioritized.

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